cogpsych-study-design
Use when designing the experiments for a Cognitive Psychology (Elsevier) manuscript so they tightly control confounds, discriminate competing models, and have adequate power across a multi-experiment program. Hardens stimulus construction, counterbalancing, design logic, and sample-size justification; it does not write analysis or modeling code.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill cogpsych-study-design --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Experiment Design (cogpsych-study-design) Cognitive Psychology expects **tightly controlled cognitive experiments** whose design is engineered to **discriminate models**, organized as a **multi-experiment program** in which each experiment adds inference. The craft is in stimulus construction, counterbalancing, confound control, and powering the *critical contrast* — not just the main effect. Co-design the experiments with the model (`cogpsych-theory-and-hypotheses`). ## When to trigger - Designing an experiment or a multi-experiment series - Constructing stimuli, item sets, and counterbalancing schemes - A reviewer questioned confounds, power, design logic, or whether the design discriminates the models - Justifying sample size for the critical contrast (often an interaction) ## Design standards 1. **Design for discrimination.** Build the design so the data produce the **signature that separates the models** (e.g., a manipulation that the rival accounts predict to diverge). A design that both models predict equally well wastes the experiment. 2. **Control researcher and stimulus degrees of freedom.** Counterbalance condition/item assignment; control low-level confounds (frequenc
- When to trigger
- Design standards
- Powering the critical contrast — worked example (illustrative)
- Pre-data lockdown checklist
- Design-stage reviewer pushback and the venue fix
- Execution bridge (StatsPAI / Stata MCP)
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
- Supplementary resources
What does the cogpsych-study-design skill do?
Use when designing the experiments for a Cognitive Psychology (Elsevier) manuscript so they tightly control confounds, discriminate competing models, and have adequate power across a multi-experiment program. Hardens stimulus construction, counterbalancing, design logic, and sample-size justification; it does not write analysis or modeling code.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill cogpsych-study-design --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 909 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.